Judith Martin, the popular American columnist better known as “Miss Manners”, advocates restraint when responding to insults: “I don't believe in answering rudeness with rudeness”, she once said in an interview. In extreme circumstances, however, – such as when a man asks a woman whether she’s expecting – Martin does permit to “defend one’s own honor.”

On his first anniversary as secretary of state on Tuesday, John Kerry celebrated by reactivating his Twitter handle. “It only took a year but @StateDept finally let me have my own @Twitter account,” Mr. Kerry tweeted with the hashtag #JKTweetsAgain, as if to suggest he had been held hostage for the last year without a BlackBerry.

As U.S. mediated Middle East peace talks enter their seventh month, mounting tensions have emerged between Israel and Washington. Israeli officials are furious after Secretary of State John Kerry warned that if peace talks with the Palestinians fail, Israel could face growing international boycotts. Kerry was speaking at a security conference in Munich.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is reaching the last stretch of the first round (out of 12 at least) of the hopeless boxing match he is waging against the bitter fate in the Middle East. Kerry's paper will probably be called Terms of Reference, which is not easily translatable into Hebrew. Several alternative and loose translations are possible — such as "principles of reference," "an agreed-upon basis for discussion" or "negotiation guidelines" — and with them just as many variations.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden will deliver remarks on 100,000 Strong in the Americas on Friday, January 17, 2014, at 2:45 p.m. at the Department of State. The event will also feature remarks by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta S. Jacobson, and Special Advisor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

Israel's defence minister has accused US Secretary of State, John Kerry, of an "incomprehensible obsession" with his push for Middle East peace, drawing an angry response from the country's chief ally. The US State Department on Tuesday described Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon's comments as "offensive," in a mark of the degree of outrage in Washington at the latest public spat between the two allies, which follows a major row over Iran policy.

Iran and six world powers reached an agreement Sunday on how to implement a short-term deal that was struck in November and gives the parties a six-month time frame, beginning on Jan. 20, in which to conclude a long-term agreement about Iran’s nuclear program. The Islamic Republic will open its nuclear program to daily inspection by international experts, starting the clock on the six-month deadline for a final nuclear agreement.

In its last-ditch attempt to get moderate Syrian opposition groups to the negotiating table, the Obama administration faces the prospect that a no-show wouldn't be such a bad thing. With less than two weeks to go before a long-planned peace conference in Switzerland, the main Western-backed moderate political group seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad has still not decided if it will attend. It's the latest frustration for the U.S. and allies who have spent the last 18 months trying to negotiate a transition of power from Assad to a new, representative government.